HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the Navy cargo ship Antares
was approaching the entrance of
Pearl Harbor with a barge in tow
when a lookout spotted a trailing
object in the water. Antares
signaled the destroyer Ward, which
was patrolling the approaches of
the harbor that morning.

At 0637, the officer of the deck
on Ward called the captain, Lt.
Cmdr. William W. Outerbridge, to
the bridge. Outerbridge, seeing a
small conning tower with a periscope, ordered general quarters. At
0640, he ordered turns on the shafts
for 25 knots and turned the World
War I-vintage flush-deck destroyer
toward what would later be determined to be a Japanese mini-sub.

Two minutes later, his gun crew from the No. 1 forward 4-inch/50-caliber gun mount fired a shot that passed
over the small conning tower. Then the crew from the No.
3 starboard side 4-inch/50-caliber took their turn.

In his official post-action report, Outerbridge wrote:“The shot from No. 3 gun fired at a range of 560 yardsor less struck the submarine at the waterline which wasthe junction of the hull and coning tower. Damage wasseen by several members of the crew. This was a squarepositive hit. There was no evidence of ricochet. The sub-marine was seen to heel over to starboard. The projectilewas not seen to explode outside the hull of the subma-rine. There was no splash of any size that might resultfrom an explosion or ricochet. Immediately after beinghit the submarine appeared to slow and sink. She raninto our depth charge barrage and appeared to be directlyover an exploding charge. The depth charges were setfor 100 feet. The submarine sankin 1200 feet of water and could notbe located with supersonic detector.There was a large amount of oil onthe surface where the depth chargesexploded. The attack was made at0645 which was before Pearl Harborwas bombed by Japanese planes.”In August 2002, the subma-rine finally was located on theseabed off Oahu by University ofHawaii scientists who confirmedOuterbridge’s assessment, finding ashell hole on the starboard side ofthe conning tower.Of note, the No. 3 gun crew onWard were all Naval Reservists whoa year before had been drilling atthe Naval Reserve Training Centerin St. Paul, Minn. Fittingly, todaythat gun can be found at the capitol mall of that city.That the gun survived to eventually be placed on per-manent display can be credited to a decision to convertWard into a fast attack troopship.During the conversion process on the West Coastin 1942, the 4-inch mount was removed to accommo-date more anti-aircraft armaments. Those guns wouldhelp fend off a Japanese air attack against Tulagi inApril 1943 as the veteran warship would participatein numerous amphibious operations in the SouthwestPacific that year.

With unfortunate irony, while patrolling off the beaches of Ormoc Bay in the Philippines on Dec. 7, 1944, those
AA guns could not stop a Japanese kamikaze aircraft from
hitting amidships, eventually forcing the surviving crew
to abandon ship. A blazing hulk, the ship was scuttled
by gunfire from the destroyer O’Brien. That somber duty
must have been an emotional one for O’Brien’s commanding officer — William W. Outerbridge. n

Source: David F. Winkler, “Ready Then, Ready Now, Ready
Always: More than a Century of Service by Citizen Sailors,”
Navy Reserve Centennial Committee, Washington, D.C. (2014).

Dr. David F. Winkler is a historian with the Naval Historical
Foundation.

Ship of Fate in Pearl Harbor
By DAVID F. WINKLER
WWW.SEAPOWERMAGAZINE.ORG 50 SEAPOWER / DECEMBER 2016

The destroyer USS Ward burns after
being hit by a kamikaze aircraft off
the Philippines, Dec. 7, 1944. Exactly
three years earlier, Ward fired the
first shot of the Pacific War. This
year marks the 75th anniversary of
the attack on Pearl Harbor.